In modern integrated circuit chips, different regions of the chip may have different amounts of strain induced into different regions of the substrate in which devices such as field effect transistors are fabricated. As the dimensions of the devices have decreased so has the misalignment tolerance between the mask images of different masking levels used to fabricate the various devices and interconnect structures of the integrated circuit chip. The strain induced into the substrate can often be non-uniform enough across an integrated circuit chip to cause local image placement errors between some of the existing structures on previously fabricated levels and some of the mask images on the mask being used to define structures of a current fabrication level. Image placement errors can lead to yield loss during fabrication and poor reliability of the completed integrated circuits chips. Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to mitigate or eliminate the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.